


servings per pack: 32

by nymphori



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - YouTube, FoodArtist!Kuroo, M/M, OoGuiEater!Akaashi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-07-15 00:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7197308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymphori/pseuds/nymphori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <span class="caps">Akaashi Keiji just uploaded a video: <i>the boyfriend tag</i></span>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Akaashi Keiji just uploaded a video: 500k subscriber cake celebration

It's a celebration, so as with all of his other milestones Keiji sets his camera up in his kitchen so as to let his viewers enjoy the entire process. The camera sits on a handy shelf above his bench and he hits record even though he's not at all ready to bake. He can cut it to where he really wants it to start later. Next, he brings his laptop in. He sets up his screen to record and clears all of the saved history in his browser - he has a lot of searching to do and he doesn't need anything incriminating to pop up. It's already been tried and tested that blurring things out only makes people more curious.

"Hello everyone, today I'm celebrating five hundred thousand subscribers! I don't know how I got here, but if you're one of them, thank you for supporting me!" Keiji pauses to take a deep breath. "And how does anyone celebrate anything? With cake, of course! I would usually ask for some of your favourites but I wanted this to be a surprise. Between you and me, it'll be a surprise here too. I'm just going to ask Google-sensei for some nice cakes and hope for the best." Keiji lets out a deep sigh, it's no secret that baking is not his thing, he's much better at cooking where he can wing what the end meal is made up of, but a celebratory hot pot doesn't quite have the same appeal. "Hoping really hard for the best."

Keiji opens up the web browser on his laptop and types in the first letter of his search, he lets out a sigh of relief that someone online is sure to catch when no previous results autofill for him. He types in the rest.

Celebration cakes, About 8,860,000 results (0.67 seconds).

"Well then," he types another with the hope of narrowing it down.

Easy celebration cakes, Keiji reads out as he types, About 3,840,000 results (0.67 seconds).

"Why are there so many?" Keiji sighs at his laptop. "I don't want to have to search through three million things." He idly scrolls through the first page and finds something that looks promising. "Ten simple cake recipes that will impress your friends and family." He clicks the link and is taken to a slideshow of cakes. Some of them just look like any plain old cake, easy enough to make. Others look a bit more complicated, that's fine. The article has the word easy in the title so theoretically, even if they look fancy they shouldn't pose too much of a problem to make. "Are you still with me? I think these ones should be simple enough. Red velvet," he clicks on its picture, "chocolate souffle," something a little more complicated, "raspberry swirl," seems simple enough, "coffee cream," looks the easiest to make, "salted caramel cheesecake," a fancy name for what should be an easy dessert, "and then chocolate meringue cake because it looks really elegant!" He would usually never go near the chocolate meringue cake based on the picture but there's a YouTube video linked on the page which he plans to use religiously in order to make it.

"I'm going to go and buy the ingredients now and I'll see you later!" 

"F——!" Is Keiji's first word upon returning home to find his camera flashing red lights at him. Well, that means editing just became a lot more painful. He's going to have to wait for the entire file to transfer just to delete over an hour of footage. "I can't believe I left the camera running, I'm gonna go grab the extension cable and the spare memory card because this one now has an hours footage of my empty kitchen, who needs that?"

All Keiji feels he has done today is procrastinate this video. It's what he gets for wanting to include baking the cakes as well as his usual. It's what he gets for thinking a celebration deserves more than just a store bought cake. He's made this decision and now he has to deal with it. Hours of footage of nothing and all.

"Take two!" Keiji says to the camera, "and I'm already regretting my life choices." The bench in front of him is covered in mess. Flour here, butter there, four different kinds of sugar scattered elsewhere. "If I cared more, I would have everything portioned out in little bowls but let's be real, nobody has time to live like that." Keiji looks at the mess that's spread around him. "Plus, this actually perfectly defines my life."

"Let's start easy," Keiji says to his camera. "Coffee cream... dissolve coffee seems to be the only important step." It does turn out to be simple to make, Keiji breezes through and places it in the oven.

"While that bakes, I'll start on the next one. Red velvet doesn't look to be too much trouble."

"I knew knew," Keiji says over the noise of whisking all his ingredients together, "that red velvet cake is just chocolate cake with a f——ton of red food colouring. I feel like I've been lied to my entire life."

"Oh s——!" Keiji closes the door of the oven, plus one cake, and races back to his laptop on the bench. "I forgot to check if the oven temperature was the same for all of them." It's not, but only slightly. "It shouldn't matter too much, right?"

"Next! Raspberry swirl cake! So far things have been okay, so I think our first foray into the next level of difficulty will be fine too. I just have to make a cake, which I've been able to do twice already today, and add a swirl." Keiji takes a deep breath. "It's just a swirl, swirls are easy."

"Why the f—— am I so incompetent?" Keiji places the bowl of pale pink cake mixture down on the bench and picks up his camera to show the inside of the bowl off properly. "I'm pretty f——ing sure raspberry swirl was made up by people who were too lazy to f——ing mix properly. A raspberry cake is better than raspberry swirl cake anyway." In what will hopefully prove his point, Keiji dumps a giant heaping of jam into the mixture to stir in further. When it's all mixed in, Keiji adds the tin to the nearly full oven. "Oh well, I guess it's the perfect time to make cheesecake."

"F—— my life!" Keiji groans as he opens up the recipe again. "Did this update just now or has it always said it needs to be refrigerated for ten hours?" He looks at the cake he's just made up, if he'd seen the recipe directions earlier he could have made something else, but the cake is already there all it needs it to set. For ten hours. Fuck. "Well instructions are only guidelines anyway, right? They probably just say that to be careful, right? It can't really take ten hours to set," can it? Keiji looks at his cake, he doesn't want it to fall apart just because it didn't set properly. "If I put it in the freezer I can probably cut the time down, right? Please cross your fingers, everyone."

"Souffle. Okay. We can do this. Akaashi-san you are an adult and you can do this."

"Nobody needs to know," Keiji whispers conspiratorily to the camera as he pulls the bottle away from his lips. "What else am I going to do with the bottle? The recipe only needed two tablespoons and none of my friends had any. You're right," Keiji looks into the pan, "it probably could use a little more." An obnoxious beeping fills the room and Keiji takes the pot off the heat to stop it. "Shh, shh, I'm coming, I'm coming." After switching off the timer Keiji races to the oven to take out his first cake. "Okay, the entire oven smells like coffee so I think I need to prepare myself for the fact that it's going to infuse everything in the oven from now on. At least I know ahead of time why my red velvet cake will take of coffee. There will be no surprises here," Keiji hangs his head, "why did I say that?"

There's space now, for his souffle to have a spot in the oven.

"Okay, this one starts with a chocolate base. I can do that, it's just red velvet minus the red. Lying cheating bastard. I used to think red velvet was a premium item but it's all a lie, they were right." Keiji goes to put the cake in the oven, but there's no more room. "It only has five minutes left, it's probably done already." In it goes. "I should make things more often, I didn't know my place could be this warm without killing my heater." Keiji peels himself out of his sweater. "Urgh, it's still way too hot, I'm going to go change." He feels much better now that he's changed into summer lounge clothes. "I'm actually sweating it's so hot. It doesn't feel right, it just feels gross."

"So, meringue. Oh, this one is actually easy! I can do this. And this is the one I thought was going to be hard, f—— why did I say that?"

"F—— everything!" Keiji says for possibly the hundredth time as nearly all of the meringue pieces topple to the floor. Only one piece of meringue actually managed not to roll off the bench. One. Out of the twelve that he made only one is going to be suitable for eating. Excellent. What a waste of time.

"And there we have it," Keiji lets out a sigh at what is really still a giant mess on his kitchen bench. "Coffee cream cake, red velvet cake of lies, pick raspberry cake because I'm not an incompetent mixer, iced salted caramel cheesecake, whisky dick souffle and yes I know it wasn't whisky that I put in before you all complain, and a, just a singular meringue on a cake." Keiji points out all the cakes as he names them, disappointed surely painting all his features because pointing them out isn't even necessary. They all fit their names perfectly and the fact that he's spent so long making them doesn't help with his disappointment at all.

"Okay, so baking may not be my forte, I should have just made one cake and tried to make sure it looked nice." He glares at the chocolate meringue cake. "Never mind, I realise I just tried that but it failed anyway. I don't know how Kuroo-san did it. Witchcraft probably, or maybe he sold his soul to the devil? Who knows?" Keiji cuts his attention back to the camera. "At least it's finally time to eat and that part I am good at!"

Keiji carries all of his precious and disastrous creations into his main room. He sets them all up on the table and runs back to the kitchen to start a pot of tea, he needs something to help all the cake go down. While it's brewing he fixes his camera to his tripod and angles it down towards the table. Finally, he collects his tea and sits down.

"It's finally time to eat! Thank you all again for supporting me and letting me do this day after day, I hope these taste better than they look! Itadakimasu!"

 


	2. Chapter 2

 Kuroo Tetsurou just uploaded a video: textbook smores

The end of the year means exam season and for Tetsurou, that means doing something to spark things up a little bit. He can't make studying fun. It's not something he's capable of doing for those who don't enjoy it. Then again, not everyone turns a degree in food science into making videos that teach people how to cook and following that, not everyone turns nighttime art courses into making his food look more like a prop than something that is one hundred percent edible. He wouldn't have his life play out any other way.

His idea for the weeks video is largely in part thanks to his best friend. Ice cream sandwiches are not in season here despite Bokuto chowing them down every time they manage to find the time to talk to each other given their busy schedules, but it's all Tetsurou needs to start planning. It started with drawing over the screen of Bokuto's face while they talked and ended up with his latest idea. Bokuto doesn't ever need to know that half of his ideas start with drawing over whatever food he's been eating lately. It's usually easy enough to accomplish when they live in two completely different hemispheres. Bokuto doesn't know that whatever tantalising treat he's downing while barely dressed is the inspiration for Tetsurou while he smothers himself in blankets.

Tetsurou looks at the list he made for himself after hanging up with Bokuto and searches his kitchen for the ingredients, he usually has everything he needs.

Next is the painful part - painful for him, handy when it comes to actually making the video. He opens the cupboard which houses all of his bowls and spills his ingredients around them. Salt and vanilla extract need only two of his smallest bowls. Corn syrup and white chocolate go in two bigger bowls. Milk chocolate and powdered sugar go in bigger bowls again. White sugar goes in yet another bigger bowl and the gelatine he's using is perfect in the little box he bought it in. The final step is pouring out two cups of water into two separate jugs, taking the crackers out from their box and lining everything up neatly on the bench in front of him.

He runs through the recipe one last time, it looks good to him. He prints it out once more with larger characters and tapes it to the wall behind his camera - a little bit of movie magic. He Turns his camera on, adjusts it on the tripod and sets record. Time for the real magic to happen.

"Hey, guys! Kuroo here with some tasty goodness!" His cheeks are hurting already, he's smiling too hard, again, it's not necessary. "Now I know it's exam season," the reads the words _pause for effect_  on the script written up in front of him, "hey, hey, hey, quit whining! I'm here to deliver an easy mode school themed treat for you, today we'll be making textbook smores!"

All the ingredients are laid out in front of me and as always I'll write it all out in the description below! Let's get started!"

As he signs the video off and switches off his camera Tetsurou puts everything he's made onto a plate. He takes his camera down to the main room to upload everything to his laptop straight away. While he's waiting for the file to transfer Tetsurou carries out his plate of goods to the corridor. He walks down his floor, knocking at all of the doors and handing off treats to those who answer. Tetsurou is pretty sure that his weekly routine of handing off whatever he's made for the week is one of the reasons his neighbours wave off any noise that escapes his home when Bokuto calls at the wrong time of the night.

Then it's time for the most painful part of his life, editing the video. It takes a good few hours to cut the video together so that he skips out on all of the awkward in between stages where he's not saying anything and the footage isn't anything exciting. He cuts in the footage from his phone as well so he can take his viewers with him to the stove and so that they can have a closer look at how he's decorating the treats.

He could put his subtitles on now, but, he can't be bothered quite yet. Tonight maybe, probably tomorrow.

He takes his plate of treats out one more time while he waits for the video to compress and finally he's ready to hit upload.

Tetsurou announces his new video on Twitter and shares a small clip of it on Instagram and waits for people to start watching. It's a few minutes before the notifications hit and he watches the video through once more himself to double check that it's all turned out fine for the last time. If something's wrong he'll need to take it down sooner rather than later. It all seems fine. There are places he could improve but without the funds to buy another couple of cameras and equipment just yet it's the best he's going to get for now. He refreshes the page and moves through the comments on the video. He responds to a few and then heads back to his home page to check his initial statistics.

His channel has a spike. He has an influx of new subscribers and notifications spread all throughout his channel. It makes him feel light. He must be doing something right, he can't even remember his last video but it must have been something—

Nope, not at all. It has to be said, Tetsurou doesn't expect for the bulk of his new notification traffic to be coming from a video uploaded over two years ago. He moves back to the notification page and reads through them to see if he can find the cause.

 

Ichinose commented on your video congrats on the national team, you'll never be able to eat like this again - chocolate meringue cake tutorial: i haven't watched the entire thing but i can see where Akaashi-san was going with it.

Kinoshita commented on your video congrats on the national team, you'll never be able to eat like this again - chocolate meringue cake tutorial: i want to try and make this!

Andou commented on your video textbook smores: thanks for the video! although if i'm honest i probably won't bother decorating them if i make them

Miyoshi commented on your video congrats on the national team, you'll never be able to eat like this again - chocolate meringue cake tutorial: how did Akaashi-san manage to fuck this up? these instructions seem fairly simple.

Toda commented on your video congrats on the national team, you'll never be able to eat like this again - chocolate meringue cake tutorial: you make it look so easy (｡-_-｡) does anyone have pictures of one of their attempts? after Akaashi-san's i don't really trust the video.

Sugimoto commented on your video congrats on the national team, you'll never be able to eat like this again - chocolate meringue cake tutorial: new weekend plans!

Terada commented on your video textbook smores: these are so cute

Korenaga commented on your video textbook smores: i have found the perfect way to procrastinate!

Uehara commented on your video congrats on the national team, you'll never be able to eat like this again - chocolate meringue cake tutorial: i am so happy this channel exists i need to binge everything. thank you Akaashi-san for sending me here （＾ω＾）

**Bokuto Koutarou √** commented on your video  congrats on the national team, you'll never be able to eat like this again - chocolate meringue cake tutorial: i can't believe you got a shoutout from Akaashi-san that's amazing dude! and on my video ヽ(；▽；)ノ don't even think I haven't seen all the traffic he's sent your way! forward people to me it'll be good karma!

Korenaga commented on your video congrats on the national team, you'll never be able to eat like this again - chocolate meringue cake tutorial: i know Akaashi-san sucked but i might actually try this for my sisters birthday.

**Bokuto Koutarou √** commented on your video  textbook smores: first this is really cool and second have you seen my other comment? urgent! urgent! urgent!

 

Tetsurou is glad to have Bokuto's name whitelisted amongst all the other comments that have been coming through. Even just scanning down to them it's easy to find a common theme: Akaashi-san. Whoever that is, must have sent people his way. It's a nice thing, even if Tetsurou does have to wonder why they're being sent to a video so long ago. It's grossly apparent that even though Tetsurou has no idea who this Akaashi person is, many other people do. His video has almost doubled in like and jumped up a good ten thousand views. If Akaashi has managed to do this with just mentioning him then Tetsurou probably should know _of_  them at the very least.

Searching the name takes Tetsurou straight to where he can find his person of interest. They're a competitive eater and the only problem is that they seem to upload one video a day, at least. Tetsurou doesn't want to go searching for the earliest notifications that litter his inbox for when exactly the video mentioning him is. It's too much effort. What isn't too much effort is needing to clear up his kitchen for the night. He sets his laptop up to play through Akaashi's most recent videos and gears himself up to clean.

He's only five videos down the elusive rabbit hole and more than a little distracted from the main task at hand when he stumbles across what he is pretty sure is the video he's looking for. The only way Tetsurou can really describe it is calling it a mess. Which funnily enough, is exactly the way Akaashi describes it himself, so Tetsurou doesn't have to feel too bad about it. Tetsurou isn't a professional, despite his current job he isn't qualified as either a baker or a chef. It's a hobby that managed to grow into something more, even so, he cringes at the small mistakes that are made throughout the baking process and when it gets two-thirds of the way through the video and Akaashi is describing the cakes he made, Tetsurou can't say that he's surprised.

It's also here, where Tetsurou hears his own name slipping through the cracks. If Tetsurou had been washing his dishes like he's supposed to be doing he probably would have missed it. It's such a throwaway comment that Tetsurou's amazed it managed to get so much traffic flowing his way. The rest of the video passes like a breeze. Akaashi sits down to a table and this is a scene he's watched four times already. He claimed Tetsurou's cake a case of witchcraft, but Tetsurou thinks about one video a day, and six cakes on the table in front of him and the four other videos he's watched and his jaw drops as Akaashi polishes off the cakes like it's something easy. It's not fair given that there are so many more videos that follow down after this one. So many videos, so many days and weeks and possibly months and years of eating so much every day and Tetsurou has seen him baking in his kitchen and it's witchcraft the way Akaashi's hobby doesn't register on his body at all.

It's a shame about the way the cakes turned out. Such an act of magic deserved a nice visual to accompany it.

He gets so far down Akaashi's video library that the water in his sink has run cold and it's too late to even really bother. It's apparent that Akaashi is a failure at making anything look nice before he eats it. The only dishes that look nice on his table are ones that he orders in from online and from restaurants that initially deliver without a care in the world but further back in the catalogue Tetsurou laughs as they ask where the rest of the party is as Akaashi rolls his eyes at the camera.

He hasn't finished the dishes, he's spent more than two hours standing in his kitchen doing nothing but watch videos. He hadn't even bothered to move somewhere more comfortable he was so intrigued by this person. Now he feels alert, awake. Instead of putting his newfound energy towards something useful, Tetsurou carries his laptop to the desk in his room and fishes for a pen and paper. Akaashi sent him viewers, Tetsurou is going to thank him. It's time to plan out his next video.


	3. Chapter 3

Kuroo Tetsurou just uploaded a video: cake decorating tutorial

"It has recently come to my attention," Tetsurou spins the turntable in front of him and tries not to let it get him too distracted, "that amongst all the videos and food that I have shown you guys how to make, I have yet to make the most basic of all: just your regular old cake decorating tutorial." Tetsurou stills the turntable with both hands. "I say regular old cake decorating, but show up to a party with one of these and everyone will be talking about it! Trust me! I am trustworthy, right? Do you guys feel like you can trust me?" He's getting too deep into something that should have been a throwaway comment. He could cut it out, but he won't, the question has been posed and now he needs to know. "Please let me know if you think I'm trustworthy or not and why with any suggestions for future videos!" There, perfect, seamless. Hopefully, they can't tell that he's more than a little desperate to know the answers.

Anyone in the know will realise that this is a video in response to Akaashi's massacre of cakes nearly two weeks ago now. What they hopefully won't be able to figure out is that Tetsurou is doubting his trustworthiness because of just how much Akaashi sucked at putting the cake together that Tetsurou thought was pretty simple. This is going back to the very basic of the basics while still actually trying and Tetsurou really hopes that the viewers they share will direct Akaashi towards the video and that he will take on the challenge to get his own baking under control. It's not something he needs to do, but if his tutorials are largely interesting and very few people actually take on and successfully create the piece he's sharing then he feels a little letdown. He just wants to help people enjoy their food a bit more. Turn something that is usually plain into something they can be proud of.

"Here, I have a cake that I have prepared earlier!" He's always wanted to say that, and part of him is actually surprised that it's taken this long for the phrase to make it into a video. Surely, now that he has the opportunity he should be throwing it in whenever possible, but no, it's only now. "You can pick any cake you like to do this with. I'm just using a plain sponge cake that I've made, but you could use a store bought cake, or made from a box cake, or like me, go all out and use something homemade. If you're trying to impress people this is definitely my recommendation."

"I made two cakes so that it will be easier to show you all the steps on something bigger, but cutting your standard eight-inch cake or even something different in half works as well. I'll be saying this a lot this video, but this is just you're basic level one decorating tutorial. Once your happy with what you can do, the sky is your limit!"

Tetsurou places the turntable that he's been spinning off to the side and instead settles the cake down on his bench. He pulls his first decorating tool over to where he can easily reach it and stands up straight ready to speak again. He reads the lines behind his camera, reminding himself of what he has to say next.

"There are four steps to think about when decorating a cake," Tetsurou diligently holds up four fingers and counts them off with his other hand as he runs through the steps. "Step one is levelling. It's hard to have a cake look nice if it's tilting every which way. Step two is stacking, you can see why levelling is important! Step three is icing, this works to hold the cake together and will be the base of step four, which is where the real decorating happens."

"Before we start, it's important that the cake you are using is cooled. If you do this while it's warm it's just going to fall apart everywhere and then nobody wins," Tetsurou pauses, that's not quite true, "or you go the cake ball route. When I ruin a cake I usually take the cake ball route and pretend it was what I was going for the entire time." He probably shouldn't have said that. "On the other hand, if you are one of my friends and I've made you cake balls, whatever time that was it was absolutely on purpose!" Even now he can hear the echo of Bokuto's laugh from the other side of the world. "I need to learn to keep my mouth shut," a great off script idea is often not on the script for a reason, the reason usually being that he gets carried away. Now is a perfect example.

"So, step one, levelling," Tetsurou brings his focus back to the task at hand, "this is important so that when we stack the cake up it can be even! To level the cake today, I'm going to use a sharp knife, but if you really enjoy decorating cakes there are tools out there specifically for cake levelling. It's a beautiful world we live in, they make levelling the cake much easier but I doubt anyone trying this for the first time has one so cross your fingers I manage to get this straight for the video." He's asked them to do it, but just for a second Tetsurou crosses his own finger too.

"Line your knife up with the cake," Tetsurou halts in his motions and brings the camera down to the bench to get a better view. "Line your knife up with the cake, and then we're just going to cut straight across." Tetsurou follows his own instructions and is actually pretty happy when he pulls the knife away to see a fairly even cake. It's only basic, so he doesn't worry too much about the slight incline he can see. "And we do the same to the other piece."

Tetsurou puts the camera back in place and takes a few moments to himself to savour the top section of the cake he's just sliced off. He looks to his notes and lets out a sigh, he really can't be bothered torting today. He'll just mention it. "If you really like icing, you can actually cut the cake in half so that you have more layers to stack. Unless you're really good with your hands though I would really recommend waiting to get a cake leveller for that." Easy done.

He brings the turntable back into frame and lifts up the first section of cake onto it. "Now we're on to the second step, stacking!" He forgot to bring the icing out— no, he hasn't even made the icing yet. Tetsurou has never been so happy that this video is purely decorating and that it doesn't matter that he forgot the icing for the opening shot. It doesn't matter, nothing matters. As long as he puts together a cake and makes it look pretty nothing else matters. He rushes through mixing it all up, white first, which he scoops half of into a piping bag, then he dyes the rest a sky blue colour and into a second bag it goes. 

"First, you just want to outline the entire cake." It's easy enough to demonstrate while he talks, it's a slow process to make sure that he doesn't fuck up and have the icing drip down the sides. Usually, he doesn't care too much because he can clean it up when he ices the entire thing. He's making a tutorial, though, and that means he has to make it as perfect as he can while he's teaching what to do because otherwise nobody is going to listen to anything he has to say anything again.

Then again, this isn't like decorating with Bokuto who thinks that any icing is fine to use even when it drips and melts over everything because he uses too much water or isn't patient enough to wait for anything to cool before he decorates it. Tetsurou is kind of glad this isn't happening during the off-season because if Bokuto found out this was a video for Akaashi he would want to join in. Now that Tetsurou has been introduced to Akaashi's videos he understands so much of what Bokuto is talking about when he mentions the guy who ate his way through one hundred cheeseburgers just to see if he could. Now he knows that Bokuto isn't talking about some guy on his team, because that had confused him for a while, but this person online. And now Tetsurou knows he doesn't know how he didn't know of Akaashi sooner.

"You want to ice all the way around the outside, and this is good for forming a wall or dam around any filling you might want to put in." Tetsurou finishes up the smooth line he's been icing around and picks up the blue icing. "To demonstrate, I'll be putting blue icing in the centre, but you can use jam, or fruit, or cream, or anything really, be creative!" Tetsurou lightly coats the centre of the cake with blue icing. "You don't need full coverage because afterwards you're just going to smooth it over, I'm using a spatula but a knife or spoon works as well. The idea is just to smooth it down."

"If you're making a cake with multiple layers, you'll repeat this process for all of them, but I'm only doing one today so all that's left to do is sit the next piece," Tetsurou waves his hand over the other cake sitting on the bench, "right on top! The secret technique to setting the top of the cake, is flipping is over so that where you've cut to level gets flipped over to the sit on the icing, and the bottom of the cake, which you can see is smoothly baked, is on top for us to ice. It makes it a lot easier not having all the crumbs to deal with!"

"Step three is icing the cake! Usually, I would use a tip for this, but I figure most of you guys don't have one, and so I'm just gonna go through and do this with a knife. If you can get piping tips they make things easier, but if you're never going to use them again there's not much point to investing in them. Spend the money on ingredients instead and treat yourself!" He picks up the bag of white icing and preps it in his hand. "We'll start with the top first, and we just want to cover the entire top of the cake. We're not making a wall, this time, we just want coverage. It's perfectly fine if some of your icing drips down the side," and Tetsurou goes against the way he wants this video to be perfect in order to demonstrate just that, "because we'll be icing the sides next! Once you have a nice cover, you're just going to take a spatula again and smooth it out."

Tetsurou shakes out his hands where they are sore from gripping the bag and gets ready to move again.

"Icing the sides is where the turntable I'm using comes in handy! If you don't have a turntable, get a friend to help, or just work in sections. It'll all turn out the same it'll just take a bit more time smoothing things over when it's all covered!" Smoothing things out is possibly Tetsurou's least favourite part of the decorating procedure, but he's not going to tell his viewers that. "You just want to pipe it on, and spin it around so that you don't have to move around so much," he's too nice, he's going to do it anyway. He pipes on the first ribbon of icing around the cake using the turntable, and for the next, "but otherwise working this way is fine!" Hopefully, nobody can see the pain in his eyes. "With a spatula again you just want to smooth the whole thing over. I usually end up with an overhang up on the edges," Tetsurou pauses in his motions to bring his camera closer to show off what he is trying to say, "and to fix this, with the spatula again I'm just going to bring it in and smooth it over." He keeps the camera close in his left hand and works on the cake with his right and hopes that the footage isn't too jumpy.

"If you just want something basic, you can stop here, but if you want a really smooth, shiny finish on your icing leave it for fifteen minutes or so to set it, and then use some parchment paper to carefully rub over the surface. This will fill in any cracks that appear while it dries and is a good opportunity to check for any bumps you might have missed!"

Tetsurou lets out a long deep sigh that will definitely not be staying in the video and stretches his arms out. He's so sore, this is the effort he goes to for something that might not even be seen. As challenging as some of the other dishes he makes are they are generally a lot less tedious. If you mess something up in a meal that doesn't have a set shape it doesn't stand out, on something like this where it's designed to be smooth it's very apparent when something goes wrong, or when it's rushed through. Something else to keep out of the video.

"And finally we're here at step four: decorating! This is my favourite step, and really where you can let your creative side shine. For this video, I'll be keeping it simple, but I'd love to see what kind of things you guys come up with!" He would love to go crazy with the design, but if Akaashi sees this video, which might not even happen, and actually tries to follow Tetsurou's advice, which actually has an even smaller chance of happening, Tetsurou wants it to be something easy, achievable. "I'm going to start with the edges because it's the trickiest part and it's always nice to see what you have to work with before finishing it all off— and there's nothing more annoying than trying to fix the edges when you have a perfect cake top." Something he has had to deal with far too many times in the path before he finally learnt better.

"I'm going to give the cake some swag — yes, this is the real word for it — which are just these loops. You want to squeeze out on the edge, let some hang down and seal the loop back up the top." It's so much harder to do without a proper piping tool, but Tetsurou is making most of this video with the assumption that Akaashi — his viewers if someone asks — doesn't own piping tools. Or any of the tools really. The methods he goes to — "and we'll just pretend that they're all neat and that this loop here is smaller. This is your piece, keep this side towards you!"

"The next stage is just working around the bottom edge of the cake, so if you're making this at home this is the time where you want to make sure the cake is on whatever plate or platter that you're going to serve it on. I just have it on a steady piece of card, that way it's ready to move plates or platters or boxes if you're going to be transporting it somewhere! And I'm just going to dot all the way around the edge. If you have piping tips at home, I usually like to use the star one because it just gives it a more polished look when it's done!" Unlike now where he's trying his best to make sure that the hole at the end of his piping bag isn't going to spontaneously expand and leave a giant gloop of icing somewhere he won't be able to hide. He's already hiding the giant loop he made but that's just to show that it doesn't matter for the end product. He doesn't know many people who inspect all aspects of the cake, if he points it towards him then nobody ever needs to know.

"We're going to do the exact same around the top edge of the cake now too, which will also hide our swag connections!"

"To finish off I'm just going to add these sprinkles on top to fill in the space here. If this is for a birthday or a celebration you could pipe a message, but for now, I think this makes a nice finish." He shakes the sprinkles on, blue and pink and purple to subtly tie in with the blue icing he's piped onto the top and bottom edge of the cake. It's fairly tame compared to what he usually makes these days, but it's done, it's finally done. It's tame and boring and easy, exactly what he was aiming for.

"Just like that, we're all done! I hope this video on how to assemble and decorate a cake was helpful for you guys! If you do end up making this up for yourself or for someone in your life please share it with the hashtag cake swag," Tetsurou holds his hand out where he can put the words in, "because I love seeing your own creations!"

Tetsurou wonders after making the cake if anyone on his floor has a birthday coming up. It would be handy. They probably don't. If he runs down the hall in the morning he could probably get Mika to take it in with her for the kids at school, but that also means taking the risk that her boyfriend will find out. It's still probably his best option. He sets his camera to transfer the video over to his laptop while he cleans up, and following that ordeal he works through cutting down the footage. Het gets it ready to upload while he gets himself ready for bed, and finalises the entire thing as he curls up under his blankets.

Tetsurou refreshes the page almost religiously before the pull of slumber convinces him to shut his laptop and push it away. He can check in the morning.

Kirisaki commented on your video cake decorating tutorial: okay team, how do we get Akaashi-san to see this?

It's the only comment Tetsurou really needs to see. Mission accomplished.


	4. Chapter 4

Akaashi Keiji just uploaded a video: celebration cake - take two times two

It doesn't take long for Keiji to find the video that seems to be made just for him. It's how he found it. It's hard to ignore thousands of people directing him towards the video and it's even harder to ignore people he knows pointing him towards the video. Hardest of all is ignoring Bokuto pointing him towards the same video - and Keiji doesn't even hear from Bokuto that often these days.

And so, Keiji watches the video after posting his own, and in the afternoon of the same day he takes himself out to the store to stock up on what he will need.

And so it is five minutes later as he's looking down the intimidating aisle that houses all of the baking supplies that Keiji remembers he's done his important video. He made his big - not quite as emotional as people wanted - video thanking everyone for supporting him. Yes, they want him to do this as well, but also, it's less important. He doesn't really have to put as much effort into the making part as the eating part, not when it's just his usual and not a milestone, and it is with this thought fresh in his mind, that the decision is made.

There's so much less pressure on him when the preparation isn't actually a part of the video. He doesn't have to worry as much about how much he really isn't in this as a cooking channel, he doesn't have to think about how much more effort it is to cut together all the different sections of his day.

Waking up the next morning is easy. He doesn't panic, Keiji just pulls out all of his purchases from the day before and sets them up on his kitchen bench. First, a picture. Second, he gets to work. And without the constant light of the camera looking down at him as he does so he doesn't have to worry about anything. He doesn't have to worry about filling the silence, he doesn't have to worry about how everything is really supposed to look. Keiji doesn't have to worry about anything except for the instructions on the box printed out so clearly that even a child could follow the directions.

His kitchen warms up the same as it did the last time but Keiji is prepared for it already. He strips off his jumper and even once everything has cooled down enough for his next step the open door of the oven blows warm are into the small space. It's nice. He should definitely think about making more food himself while the worst of the winter chill passes. It means a warm house and less time opening his door to accept the takeaway meals and less time waiting around outside the stores that refuse to deliver to him. It's a good idea, it's something to think about.

For the moment, he pulls up the video that has been way too hard to ignore for the last few days and follows it the best he can.

He tries to follow it the best he can given that he has half an ounce of perfectionist in him and the rest of him is built up of laziness and everlasting hunger.

Still, when Keiji looks at his completed project he's quite happy with himself. Does it look the same? No, not quite, but Keiji thinks that it's still more than obvious about where his inspiration came from. His viewers will know, they'll be happy.

They'll actually be a little disappointed probably but Keiji has delivered on the one promise that they really asked for and is delivering double on what they really signed up for so hopefully they can be happy with that.

Keiji finishes touching up the last of the icing and leaves everything in the kitchen while he sets up his camera in the main room. He doesn't actually know if he has enough room for everything on his small table. Desserts always take up so much more room than meals.

He settles the main course down on the table and settles the other decorations around it. He turns on his kettle to boil, hits record on his camera, and finishes up his tea to bring in with him. He's going to need a lot if he's really going to take on all of what's in front of him.

Keiji takes a deep breath, he's ready to do this, and later, to counter all of the sweetness he's about to consume, he has a nice dinner to look forward to. He's ready to do this.

"Hello everyone, today I'm following up on something that you've been asking me to do a lot on Twitter and in the comments section here." He pauses, he knows that when he edits this later he'll make sure to zoom in on the cake that sits front and centre on his table. "I didn't just want to make the same video again, so to make it more exciting I doubled the number of cakes!" Keiji smiles a little, just to himself, because really, there are fewer cakes than last time. "I went out last night and bought twelve boxes of cake mix," this is where he can put in the picture he took earlier, panning across the many boxes that if he felt shame would have been a lot more embarrassing to buy. "Now, I made an attempt at what everyone wanted from me," again Keiji looks at what he thinks is a pretty impressive looking cake in the centre of his table, "but with the rest of the mix I made up cupcakes because that seemed easier and like there was less chance of me f——ing up." Keiji shrugs.

He has one nice looking thing, is it his fault for not wanting to go overboard? If he'd tried with more than one cake it would surely have been doomed to fail. Getting it close enough to right one time doesn't take away from all the other times where everything had fallen to pieces. Even if the cake in front of him is made purely out of luck, it had to happen for him eventually.

"Itadakimasu!" He cuts through the giant cake in the centre of his table. "Look," he says to the camera, "I even iced it all the way through like I was supposed to." He uses his fork to select a corner of the piece he's cut off and moans into the bite. "It's so much fluffier than the cake I made. I thought packet mixes were supposed to be worse than ones made from scratch." It doesn't take long to finish the piece off. Between pieces, because the cake really is the centrepiece of the whole video, Keiji eats through a few of the cupcakes he has piled and stacked around the rest of his small table. "I know you're going to ask about this-" Keiji says with a mouthful of food, he probably shouldn't actually talk while he's still chewing. He can wait, they'll appreciate him waiting. He chews and swallows and tries again. "I know you're going to talk about this, but yes, I know that not all the cupcakes are iced. I had to use extra icing on the cake," Keiji cuts himself off another slice, "because the cake mix doesn't actually have enough icing to cover the entire cake. Especially if you're trying to be fancy with it." If one could even call it fancy.

He only bought two different boxes of cakes. Chocolate and vanilla. His hand did stray for one moment towards red velvet but then he had remembered the lie that was red velvet and immediately taken his hand away from it. As such, where in the video he watched the cake was a nice mix of white icing and blue icing, Keiji's cake is a mess of chocolate frosting and vanilla frosting. He's also not sure how the video made it look so neat, Keiji's little blobs along the edges of the cake are all different sizes and some of them have peaks on top from where he had piped them out - not from a piping bag but from the bag the frosting sat in within the box. It's probably a lazy thing again, if he really tried he could probably have it looking nicer but there's really no point in spending so much time working on the cake to have it look nice when it makes no real difference to how he's going to eat it.

"I can't believe this is cooked all the way to the centre," Keiji says in between bites. "Is it bad if this is the first time I've ever baked a cake properly?" He finishes off the piece of cake and moves on to devouring another round of cupcakes. "I think it's just easier when everything is already done and all I have to do is add egg and oil and milk." Keiji moves back to the cake. "Yes, that's a tip I actually read and actually did, I swapped out the water the box needed for milk and actually, that might be why this tastes so fluffy." The icing is a bit much, though. The chocolate icing is too rich and when it switches to vanilla it counters the chocolate by being too sweet. He swallows down a lot of tea to make up for it and it isn't long before Keiji needs to brew himself another round.

"Also," Keiji sits back down with a fresh pot of tea to another batch of cupcakes, "I just used the cake mix to make the cupcakes, and the icing was actually enough for all of the cupcakes that one box made." Keiji holds one of the cupcakes out in front of him. "I didn't even go easy on the icing there was actually enough. So it's really weird that there isn't enough icing to go all out on a giant cake but if you're making cupcakes it's perfect!" More than perfect, Keiji's pretty sure that in the past when he's bought cupcake mix rather than cake mix there'd never been enough icing for an entire batch. It's a conspiracy, they're trying to make him buy a tub of icing as well as the mix because there's never enough in the box, but Keiji knows better now. Next time there's a need for cupcakes Keiji is going to go straight for the cake mix, then he'll have enough icing to spare for all of them.

It doesn't even make sense when he really thinks about it. "Isn't there a bigger surface area on the cupcakes compared to a cake? Shouldn't that mean there isn't enough to spread liberally?" Keiji freezes between bites with his eyes on the camera. He wasn't meant to say that part out loud but he knows he's going to keep it in regardless. Something to remind everyone that he does need their support on his channel because at this point he's not sure how he's meant to be qualified enough for any other job.

He eats another slice of cake, another batch of cupcakes.

"Halfway!" Keiji says, and it sounds like a good time to go and grab another drink. He's really looking forward to dinner already. No dessert, just dinner. Lots of sides. Nothing sweet.

"I'm going to be honest here, eating the same flavours over and over again is getting really boring." As much trouble as it had been to make six cakes last time, it definitely made it easier to eat. "If you're doing this yourself, for whatever reason, maybe you're having a party? I'm pretty sure that's what the attendant was thinking when I bought all of this. I think that's what they think every time I go in actually, they must think I have people over a lot." Keiji forgoes taking a bite of the cupcake to just push the entire thing into his mouth, the second half of eating is less commentary and more getting the food down, he's made his comments. There's only so many times he can talk about the same flavour. "Or maybe they watch here, if you do watch and you want to sponsor me please do!" He smiles for the camera, a smile probably full of chocolate covering his teeth, but a smile all the same.

He forgot what he was even saying, right, "anyway, if you're doing this at home get lots of different flavours. If you're actually having a party, everyone can pick a favourite, if you're not having a party, well, I don't really know why anyone would need so many cakes in their life." He doesn't need so many cakes in his life, but this is his life now. His viewers aren't going to rest until he can make and bake and decorate a cake with ease.

He eats the final quarter of the cake and a good chunk of the cupcakes at his own pace, silently, and supplements the extreme flavours with sips of his drink. Keiji almost can't believe that he'd been intimidated by the amount of food, it turns out that the flavour was more of an obstacle than the amount.

"Final mouthful, itadakimasu!" Okay, not quite last mouthful, he is being a bit too eager but it's already been said. It takes a moment to chew and swallow and while it's the last piece of the cake, Keiji still takes some time to scrape up crumbs and icing that have fallen onto the plate. Again, it's not quite the last mouthful, but it's close enough.

"Well, I think I did justice to everyone that wanted me to try out the cake thing again, but I actually preferred the cupcake version. I liked how fluffy the cake was but the cupcakes were firmer and maybe it was because I didn't have to wait for them to cool. I ate the cupcakes warm so that might have made them seem nicer." He stacks the plates up to one side of the table and rests two of the cake mix boxes on the table to be in the shot.

"Once again, these are the mixes I used today if you want to try either the cake or the cupcakes yourselves. And if you think you can follow instructions better than I can," his table is cleared now, but Keiji still finds his eyes straying to where the cake had been sitting on his table, "I'll leave the link to Kuroo-san's video and you can all have a try yourselves." Keiji pauses, because he knows, it's instinct, he just knows that he's going to be inundated with pictures of cakes that turned out way better than what he achieved, even if they use the same cake mix they'll be better. They'll probably give in to the conspiracy of too little icing and buy the tubs to supplement it. "Just remember, though, if you make it look too nice you won't want to eat it," Keiji's voice trails off, "which is why my cooking is always a mess." Lower again, almost under his breath, Keiji continues, "that's actually a good excuse, I should use that. Why make something look nice when it's just going to be eaten anyway?" Except maybe once, just once he'd like to succeed. If he can do it once he'll be happy. He lets out a long sigh. One day, maybe, hopefully...

"If you liked this video please leave a like and if you would like to see more please subscribe and I'll be back again tomorrow!" 


	5. Chapter 5

Kuroo Tetsurou just uploaded a video: food as art

_If you make it too nice, you won't want to eat it. If you make it too nice, you won't want to eat it. If you make it too nice, you won't want to eat it._

Akaashi's words resound in Tetsurou's head for a long time, for days after they're said. Tetsurou watches another two days of Akaashi ordering and eating excessive amounts of food and still the words play around in his head. It's frustrating in a way. He puts so much effort into his creations. He doesn't just make sure they look good - too many weddings as a kid and giant cakes that looked better than they tasted had changed him. Tetsurou doesn't just make aesthetically pleasing food, he makes food that tastes the way it looks. He's proud of that. He's proud that among his friends that what he's known for.

He's so well known for it, that he has friends ask him, hire him, to make things for them when they have something special coming up. Case in point: Akane's upcoming twentieth birthday party. 

He's proud of being asked to do something like this. He's proud of himself for creating things so memorable, even what feels like a lifetime ago in high school, that his old school friends contact him to provide something special for a special day.

He's going to show other people how proud he is of himself too.

With Bokuto out of town, it's rare for him to make a vlog, but the weekends creation is too advanced and time consuming to make into a tutorial, so a vlog seems like the perfect way to fuel this insane desire to show Akaashi— to show people, he is showing people— that creating something that both looks good and tastes good is something to be admired.

So, on Friday afternoon, as soon as Tetsurou is a fair distance away from his apartment he brings up his camera in front of him and hits record, ignoring as best as he can the stares he gets from other people on the street. 

"Hey guys! Extra video for you this week because I'm doing something really cool for my friend's little sisters birthday!" He chuckles briefly. Imagining how much joy Yamamoto would get from featuring in his video. Tetsurou should perhaps send him a message, warn him ahead of time that he's coming over with his camera ready to film. On the other hand, Tetsurou is far more looking forward to Yamamoto's face when he discovers that Tetsurou is filming and that it's going to be online and that he hasn't given Yamamoto time to prepare himself for being in something that  _girls_ are going to see. "It's a lot of work to turn into one of my usual video's, but I'm pretty excited about it so I thought I would bring you guys along to see what I'll be doing." Although Tetsurou realises, they'll probably catch pictures of what he's making on Instagram before he gets around to posting the video up.

He switches the camera off and goes over the plans for the piece he's making once more in his head. Yamamoto has most of the details at his house. Tetsurou sent them over a couple of weeks ago to make sure that Yamamoto did actually have the space for all of the preparations at his family home. He's only made a couple of adjustments since, and the tools he needs for that are tucked safely into his bag.

"Yamamoto!" Tetsurou cheers as soon as the door in front of him is open and he can confirm that it is, in fact, the Yamamoto he wanted letting him in.

"Kuroo?" Yamamoto replies, partly enthusiastic, mostly sounding concerned about what it is exactly that has Tetsurou excited to be at his house at eight in the morning.

"Tell the people what I'm here for!" Tetsurou watches with glee as Yamamoto, still visibly half asleep, catches on to the camera held up in his other hand. Yamamoto's eyes go wide, his hands move to the mess of his hair, to the stained shirt that looks well slept in, and then pushes in on the lens. "Oi! Hands off the goods!" Tetsurou chirps good-naturedly for his viewers. Directly in front of him, Tetsurou sees the threat register in Yamamoto's eyes and his hand moves away.

"At least let me get dressed before shoving the camera in my face."

"Getting dressed doesn't help your face," Tetsurou laughs as Yamamoto rushes back inside and invites himself in. He lines his shoes up by the door and steps into a warm pair of slippers. As he moves further into the house it gradually gets warmer, and Tetsurou enjoys it while he can. Unfortunately, for him and Yamamoto both, they'll be working in a much cooler environment for Akane's treat.

In what Tetsurou considers a record time, Yamamoto climbs back downstairs and meets him in the lounge. Tetsurou neglects to tell him that it looks like he still has toothpaste lining one side of his mouth and picks his camera up again. "Ready to tell the people what they're in for?" Tetsurou asks.

Yamamoto leads him through to the kitchen, which Tetsurou is happy to note is a good few degrees cooler than the rest of the house, and waves his hand over everything that Tetsurou has sent ahead lying on the kitchen bench.

"Is that all they're getting?" Yamamoto pouts and Tetsurou laughs silently behind the camera, "what will the girls think?" Tetsurou presses. Yamamoto mouths something that he'll have to blur out but at least he looks ready to cooperate.

"Akane," he pauses, "my little sister, is going on an exchange for the next three months and as a result will be away for the coming of age celebration, as well as her actual birthday. Our parents didn't want to miss out on celebrating her adulthood, so we're having a family celebration early."

Tetsurou can't help but interrupt with a bark of laughter. The dessert he's been hired to prepare for the family celebration is giant. He thinks about the five members of the Yamamoto clan who live beneath the roof he's under now and picture them all consuming the dessert he's making. He doesn't think they would even make it halfway.

"It's a family celebration," Yamamoto interjects over Tetsurou's laughter, "but it's also the entire family, all of Akane's friends, a few of mine that she knows." Yamamoto pauses for long enough that Tetsurou almost turns his camera away. "Hell, even Kuroo's coming."

Tetsurou jolts, the camera shakes, and this time Yamamoto laughs. He forgot about that. He's been so excited to show off what he's making that he totally forgot that he was also going to get to see everyone else eat what he makes as well. He'll get to see first hand if Akane really enjoys what he's making for her. "Right," Tetsurou says, setting the camera on the bench while he pulls out his tripod to set the camera up, "and now it's time to get to work."

It's soothing in a way, being able to work, to create, without needing to take a moment every so often to explain what it is that he's doing. Especially now, there's only so much that can be said while he's making batch after batch of chocolate by hand. It makes Tetsurou a little happy to see Yamamoto's face as he spreads the chocolate out to temper.

Tetsurou eats as he works. Yamamoto flutters in and out of the kitchen along with his parents, who press even more food upon Tetsurou. As thanks, they say, and Tetsurou has to remind him that they have already paid for him to do this today. He eats the food anyway. He doesn't see Akane at all, and when he asks about her whereabouts Yamamoto tells him that she doesn't want to see the magic in action.

Magic, Tetsurou likes that what he's doing is being called that.

Throughout the afternoon is when the real magic happens. Tetsurou colours pieces of the chocolate and folds it all into the moulds he made at home. He made them specifically for Akane's party, but if it turns out as he's hoping it will, then Tetsurou will be using them again.

Finally, day one is over. Tetsurou enlists the help of Yamamoto and his parents to carefully carry all of his moulds to their garage to be stored in what seems like the entire neighbourhoods supply of tupperware for the night.

At home again in the peace and quiet, Tetsurou loads up his footage from the day to his laptop and starts the editing process. On his television, he loads up the volleyball game that was played during the night, and even though he can't understand the commentary he does look up every time he hears Bokuto's name said in a foreign accent.

Post Bokuto's game, Tetsurou sends him a message to congratulate him on the win and sets about making something up for dinner. Not much, he feels like he's been eating all day thanks to Yamamoto's parents. While he eats, he searches up Akaashi's video for the day and watches it while he eats. He's out with a friend and eating ridiculous amounts of food at a restaurant and seeing a large order of katsudon placed next to the monstrosity that Akaashi has ordered really drives it home to Tetsurou just how much the guy is eating. It's almost painful to watch except Akaashi's friend makes it look like the occasion doesn't warrant any special attention. Akaashi's friend makes it look like they're bored with the entire ordeal.

Tetsurou scrolls through the comments, hoping to come across his name for reasons, but instead he finds people excited for the meeting up of Akaashi and his friend. 

It makes sense, because Tetsurou has been looking, snooping, researching; and his name is most likely to crop up in comments when their videos are uploaded on the same day. He's found this out even back to videos uploaded before he even knew who Akaashi Keiji was. It makes him wonder if Akaashi does the same. He probably doesn't. Akaashi has been subscribed to his channel for who knows how long, a search for his name popping up beneath hundreds and thousands of other subscription notifications. Tetsurou isn't subscribed, not yet, and he almost feels scared to do so now. Not scared. Paranoid. Like maybe Akaashi will notice or somehow other people will notice and it will be a big deal.

It's not. It's not going to be. But Tetsurou can't keep these thoughts from running in his head.

Besides, Akaashi's channel is one of his most viewed pages over the last few weeks. He doesn't need to subscribe. All Tetsurou has to do to see his latest video is open up a new tab and Akaashi's channel is sitting right there.

Probably more incriminating than a simple subscription, but nobody should be able to get into his laptop to see that.

Tetsurou doesn't show up at Yamamoto's house again until late into Saturday afternoon. There's no point setting the display up too early or it will melt. Something nobody wants, given how much work and time have gone into it even at this stage.

Already the house has been transformed. Yamamoto is on a step ladder outside the front door when Tetsurou arrives, pinning fairy lights around the entrance. Tetsurou waves at him and is waved inside in return. He drops off his bag of clothes to change into upstairs in Yamamoto's room and waltzes out to the backyard to see the magical transformation that has taken place.

Outside Akane and a few other girls are helping her parents decorate tables and chairs, draping everything with shawls and blankets and pillows galore. It's the beginning of a masterpiece and Tetsurou is in awe of what he's seeing, even as he's glad that nobody in his family cared anywhere close to as much about celebrating his coming of age.

"Akane-chan!" He calls out to announce his presence, "where do you want the goods?"

Akane greets him with a giant smile on her face, although her friends give him a wide berth. Akane leads him to the centre table and Tetsurou wonders why he even had to ask, the centre of the table has clearly been left for him. It's devoid of all the candles and lights that litter the surrounding tables.

"I'm going to set a camera up, if you don't want to be caught, just have a look what it's catching." Akane nods, while her friends once more look distraught with the idea that Tetsurou has come to film them.

In the garage, the chocolate pieces have hardened nicely during the cold night. Tetsurou carries them all out to the edge of the table he's going to decorate and sets the camera up properly, to make sure that he can catch all of his work in action.

Akane kept out of the way yesterday, but now Tetsurou can feel her eyes on his hands every time he places a new piece onto the table. He hears her gasp and sigh as pieces come together, as the picture comes together. Her friends seem to be less scared of him as well. How can he be scary when something that looks so nice is coming from his hands? That's how Tetsurou thinks that process came along anyway.

 Tetsurou likes it, he likes the gasps and the whispered comments, and he's hearing this only from the few people who are helping to set the event up. It's different to making something in a video and reading the responses. It's so much nicer to hear the tone behind the words, the awe whispered behind hands which he hears anyway. It's the real reason he does this. To make people happy, to see people happy. To see wide smiles spread across glowing faces and know that he's helped it to sit there.

It's why he started, it's why now, even with his videos and his job online, he keeps promises to his friends, to people who ask him to make things. It's why he still bakes, cooks, creates, in his spare time, for friends birthdays, for parties, for homecomings, because he likes adding something to the occasion that people will remember.

He hopes they remember. Tetsurou has heard many times while out people complain about the abundance of food photos spread throughout the internet. Tetsurou loves them himself. It's his creations immortalised as a memory. A good time.

And it's proved true as he finally finishes up, and the first thing Akane does is pull out her phone to take a picture. Tetsurou watches over her shoulder as she adds it to a message to send to her friends. He watches, and messages are sent back, exclamations, smiling faces, words that make his own face melt.

His masterpiece is complete, the experience has come full circle. Akane is overjoyed with the edible centrepiece. Flowers, made with milk and white and dark chocolate, coloured in pinks and purples and oranges and reds and some of the bouquets left as their natural colour. It's art, it's edible, it's a memory, it's happiness on a plate and ready to be devoured.

He packs his camera equipment away along with the rest of his clearing up. It leaves him just over half an hour to change before guests start arriving for dinner.

Tetsurou films some of the night, he films conversations with some of his friends. He films people talking about his design, he films them eating it. He captures what he wishes he could see every week. The smiles and laughter and joy that comes from having people consume something he's made.

He's proud of this piece, of this work, of what he does. Tetsurou feels it even more so when he uploads the video to piece it all together with day one. And he might add to it, sure, the shoujo bubbles that fly around when people smile weren't real on the night but they are in his head, they're what Tetsurou sees.

When he uploads the video, late on Sunday, he tracks through the response as he eats. They're all positive. Very positive. A lot involve marriage proposals, which Tetsurou takes as a good thing, and it's not rare to see people wishing that they were his friends, that he could put so much care into something that was just for them as well. It makes his heart light. If he had infinite time and infinite resources he might consider doing so, but such is life. It will always remain a wish for them. 

One comment stands out from the others.

Akaashi Keiji √ left a comment on your video food as art: eating this just seems cruel, all of the effort and design put into it disappears as soon as people start taking it apart.

Tetsurou huffs out a laugh. Something too big for him sitting in front of his computer by himself. He huffs out a laugh because this is the first time they've ever interacted. If it can even be called that. Tetsurou has indirectly made a video for Akaashi, after finding out that Akaashi mentioned his name once. Everything has been blown out of proportion because the food community he exists in is small and he shares fans with Akaashi.

And that makes Tetsurou think. Because Akaashi has commented on his video. He refreshes the page and already the comment is piling up with likes. Already, people are replying to Akaashi's comments and contrary to what Tetsurou usually sees beneath some of his top comments, these replies are interesting.

Further down, Akaashi has a reply to his own comment.

 **Akaashi Keiji** √ they do all seem to be enjoying it, though, it must taste nice.

And, Tetsurou has an idea.


	6. Chapter 6

Akaashi Keiji just uploaded a video: opening your mail

It's earlier in the month than he usually does this, but when his manager calls in to say that he has perishable food items in his mailbox Keiji doesn't have much of a choice. It's not even that he really minds, it's more that he feels bad for picking and choosing what letters make it into the video. He doesn't really think people are going to sit through a two-hour video of him opening mail unless they've sent him something.

And Keiji sometimes thinks it comes across that he's ungrateful for making these video's in particular. But he's not, he's really not. He actually gets excited every time he's called in to pick up mail that they can't hold for him until the end of the month. It makes him feel exceedingly happy because if his manager can't hold on to it for him it usually means that it's a parcel, and while he never specifically asks for them he loves it when he gets them. A parcel usually means food, and Keiji loves the opportunity to snack on foods from all over the world. At least, it was exciting once he got over the shock that _people all over the world_ are watching his videos.

It's a lot to take in, all he does is eat. But also, Keiji does have to concede, if there's one thing that everyone in the world has in common it is needing to eat.

The only thing that Keiji doesn't like about making these videos is having to get everything home again. He doesn't have a car. He doesn't know anyone that owns a car, well, at least not anyone who lives in the city. The only thing Keiji doesn't like about getting mail is taking the train out to see his manager and then sitting awkwardly in the back of a taxi home again while he's surrounded by extravagantly decorated boxes and envelopes that are filled with his name.

Once, he was asked if he was a celebrity. He'd answered no, and then refused to say anything else for the rest of the ride home, covering up his name as much as he could so that the curious eyes of the driver would hopefully not be able to look him up later.

It's not that he's ashamed of what he does for a living. It's just that it's a hard thing to explain to friends of his parents who lament that he had done so well in high school and then given it all up to make videos for the internet. In some cases, Keiji can't even tell if his parents have told these people what kind of videos he makes for the internet. The way they shoo their children away from him says they think something very different about what Keiji does with his time.

It takes Keiji two very awkward trips to get everything up to his apartment and then he gets straight into it.

He sets up his camera on its tripod in its usual spot, and tucks as many of the parcels he's carried up under the table as possible. He hits record and fetches a drink of water before sitting down to rifle through everything.

"Hello everyone," Keiji starts off, "I know this is a little early this month but at least one of you wrote down that you sent in perishable food and I couldn't leave opening it any later. I'll probably still do another letter opening video at the end of the month as usual just so that next month's doesn't become way too much." Also, Keiji doesn't want to offset his timing by having to do another mid-month letter opening video if things take up too much space.

Something that will always make it into the video are names. For every letter he opens, for every package, Keiji reads out the name of the person who sent it in. Some of them he reads out, but even most of these won't make it into the video. Keiji will always say their names, so that the people sending him letters and postcards know that he has received them, he wants them to know that he appreciates everything.

"Kawanara-san."

"Aroha-san."

"Orli-san."

"F—— this is heavy!" Keiji exclaims, pulling up a square box onto the table. He hadn't noticed the weight when he was carrying everything up to his room. It all just kind of moulded into one giant weight but half of it seems to be from this. "This is from Ishikawa-san," Keiji reads off the card. "Wow!" Inside the box is a watermelon. A whole watermelon. Yes, Keiji often gets sent healthy foods, his viewers hoping to balance out the mess of junk food he usually films himself eating, but an entire watermelon is new for him. "The letter says, that their family owns a watermelon farm, and this is one of the last ones from the last crop of the year," which is a good point, Keiji didn't even know watermelons were around in winter, "and they're hoping I'll make a video with it." Keiji folds the letter away, and pulls the watermelon from its box to hold up to the camera. He can't hold it up for long.

"Ah, it hurts my arms to hold it up." Keiji rolls it to the side of his table, and gently places it back in its box, and settles the box back on the floor. "Tomorrow is Sunday, so I'll be posting my regular eating show, but I can definitely eat this on Monday. It should last until Monday right?" Keiji doesn't actually know how long food lasts. Most of the time he buys food to consume almost instantly. A few days should be fine, though, he hopes- he'll find out. "Thank you, Ishikawa-san."

"Horibe-san."

"Sakakibara-san."

"Sophia-san."

"Alex-san has sent in this." Keiji tears the paper off of a giant rectangular box. Not a box. Kind of a box. Three boxes. "These are," Keiji can guess, but it's easier for him to read them off the letter, "breakfast cereals." Keiji looks back at the box, "they look more like candy bars." Keiji stares intently at the packaging. The bottom corner definitely has the logo of an American chocolate company that he's seen before. "I'll eat these during the week as well I guess, thank you Alex-san!"

It's unusual that he's been gifted food items that he can use in a video. Most of the time if he is sent food, it's a small snack from wherever in the world it is that they live. Keiji likes the gifts, no doubt about it, he's just a little wary of how much postage much cost to send something so big. He already cringes when he reads the stamp prices on even the smaller food items. Within his own country, it must have been more than what was necessary to send in the watermelon. Keiji feels like it weighs more than his head.

"Ana-san."

"Hinze-san, I don't know why you watch my videos if you can't eat at the moment, but thank you very much for your support!"

"Bryn-san."

"Hector-san has sent in this package," Keiji peels away the packaging, "which I think," he looks at the accompanying letter, "yes, they're a selection of Christmas treats, I think. Gran Surtido Selección. I probably F——ed that up, but that's fine. I don't speak- where is this from?" Keiji reads over the letter again. "Spain, is that Spanish then? I don't speak Spanish." Keiji opens the box, everything inside is wrapped up individually as well. "They're all in different packages, I don't know where to start." Keiji picks up a bronze packet, and holds it up to the camera. "I'm going to eat this one, I have no idea what it is." Keiji rips the packet open and looks inside at what he's chosen.

It looks nice. "It looks like a cake of some sort, maybe?" He holds it up to the camera, "with peanuts on it as well, maybe?" Keiji has no idea.

He takes a bite. "Cinnamon, it tastes like cinnamon and not at all like peanuts." Keiji holds the cake away again to look at it. "Maybe because they're sesame seeds, that's definitely sesame seeds. Keiji holds what's left of the small cake up to the camera and takes another bite, one more bite left. "Mm, it- it falls apart really easily in my mouth, the texture is really nice." Keiji throws the last little bit into his mouth. "Mm, that was really good, I'm looking forward to eating the rest of them. Thank you, Hector-san!" 

"Riat-san."

"Shinohara-san."

"Mun Ja-san."

"This box," Keiji says holding up a square box the size of his palm, "is from," he drags the word out, looking for the sender, but can't find anything other than a sticker asking for it to be kept in a cool climate. He opens the box to see if there's a letter inside. "Wow," escapes his lips without him meaning the word to. "We can find that out later, you really need to see this." Carefully, with even more care than he usually takes — and Keiji has to wonder if he was careful enough while he was carting the box back to his room — he sets the box down on the table and from inside, with more care again, he lifts out the contents.

It might be hard to see in the video, but for Keiji sitting right in front of it, it is obvious even through the cellophane packaging.

"I really hope I don't break this." He's wary of his fingers, too long, too much of them. He's never really wished for small dainty hands before but he does now. Keiji unties the ribbon that holds the cellophane up and presses it down around what it's holding. It's facing him. He turns it around so that the camera can see and he looks up at the screen above him to check that it's in focus. "This is amazing." 

He doesn't want to touch it. He can't. At least not while his eyes are on the camera in front of him. "I still can't find a name, but thank you for this." Thank you is all he can say. What else can one say when they're met with a miniature model of their head? Palm-sized, dainty, definitely breakable. Keiji reaches for the box and right at the very bottom is a small square of paper. "Huh," Keiji says, "I still don't know who it's from, but it's made up of fondant, cake and chocolate." Keiji turns the figure around so he can look at it again himself. At the waves in his hair, the curve of his lip, the crease of his eyes - someone has put a lot of effort in and without even wanting the credit for it.

Keiji looks up at the camera again and turns it back around. "That means it's edible." Keiji looks at the figure, the camera, the figure again, the camera. "I don't really know if I can eat myself."

He looks down at it again, at the red of his mouth, at the green of his eyes, at the sparkle of light in his hair. "I can." He picks it up. "Is this bad?" There's a pause, a brief pause, where Keiji wonders if he's really going to do this. But it's food, his whole channel is about eating. The note only says what it's made of, and nowhere did it say do not eat. If they watch his channel enough to send something in Keiji really thinks they would have written something if they didn't want him to eat it. Right? He bites into it. Into the cake, into the chocolate, into the fondant, into the back of his own head.

"Mmmmmmm," Keiji groans, "it's not bad," Keiji says with a mouthful of food, he holds a hand in front of his mouth while he chews and sets the cake back onto the cellophane packaging. "It's not bad, something that tastes like that can't be bad at all." Keiji breaks off a section of his hair, places it in his mouth and lets it melt on his tongue. "It doesn't even taste like real chocolate. It's dark chocolate but it's so light. I think," -and Keiji hates whoever made it for this reason, hates them, but not really, just a little-, "I think the chocolate is homemade." He breaks off more of his hair and moans into the feel of it on his tongue as it melts. "It's so good."

With all of the point things taken off of the cake, Keiji plops the rest of it into his mouth to chew. Even missing his hair, it's more than just delicious. He groans again, he's never going to eat anything that tastes this nice ever again. Not without spending way too much money at a specialty shop.

And it's so small, Keiji wishes there was more, he wants his whole body - although maybe not quite to the amount of detail that has been put into his face. "I can't tell what flavour this cake is," he knows he shouldn't talk with his mouth full, but it's so hard not to, "but it's delicious, it's my new favourite."

Keiji swallows, and savours the flavour that is left in his mouth. He pauses, one moment, two, too long.

"Sorry," Keiji says, "I just needed a moment, that was delicious." More than that.

"Mitsuishi-san."

"Hisakawa-san."

"Stefanie-san."

"Endo-san," Keiji reads from the attached letter, "has sent in-" he has to stop because he's laughing. He pulls the gifts from the bag and lines all six of them up on the table. They look nice, and the thought behind them is nice; it doesn't stop Keiji from finding it amusing. "Thank you very much for these teas. They smell great actually." Keiji picks them up one at a time to bring closer to his face. After smelling them all individually Keiji goes back to reading the letter, "these are detox teas, because Endo-san says he is worried about my health." 

He picks up one in a pale green plastic. "This is the ultimate detox blend to help to purify the body, flush out toxins, cleanse the liver, kidneys, and digestive tract and reduce the build-up of harmful free radicals. It contains organic burdock, organic dandelion root, organic peppermint, organic red clover, organic liquorice, organic yellowdock, and organic ginger. I might have this one first. Thank you, Endo-san!"

"Elad-san."

"Gilmara-san."

"Nanba-san."

Keiji tucks away the last postcard. "Thank you so much if you sent something in, I really appreciate the thoughts you send and the support you give me so that I can continue to do this for a living. I'm grateful for all of you." Keiji sends one last smile to the camera, and stands up to turn it off and set it to download to his laptop before he sets about cleaning up all the paper from around him. He snack on more of the gifts he's received as he does so, all of them packaged, all of them bought, all of them delicious but not quite able to erase the memory of the small homemade cake he had eaten earlier.

Throughout the afternoon Keiji edits together the video and sets it to upload. He doesn't check on it again until a few hours later, after he's eaten and bathed and ready for bed. 

Kuroo Tetsurou √ commented on your video opening your mail: i can't believe you ate it !! and after saying it was cruel to eat such a thing. guess you didn't think it was that nice after all.

Keiji frowns at his screen, he feels the pull between his eyes and for some reason feels the need to search the room around him. He feels like he's being watched, he feels like somehow Kuroo can see him. Keiji knows Kuroo, well, knows of Kuroo, has for a long time, has known of him ever since Bokuto first sent him in the way of Kuroo's videos for help in making his own food. Keiji has never talked to Kuroo, not directly.

He's commented on videos before, way back when he was fighting his way through a junior degree and being jealous of the pretty lunches some of his classmates brought with them. He's commented on videos before, the ones with Bokuto, to make him happy. He's never really said anything of importance that would lead to—

Wait, yes he has. Over a week ago now, but Keiji can still remember a leaving a comment.

Keiji pulls his gaze away from where it's settled on the dark night and bright lights of the city through his window. He turns back to the screen in front of him, he clicks on Kuroo's comment in his notification bar and silences the video as he's taken to the page. It has eighty comments beneath it. Keiji expands them and reads through them, and it's exactly what he's just come to realise himself.

Kuroo sent him in food, the cake, the cake of his dreams and Kuroo has now left this comment, all because of what Keiji said in a comment on his last video.

Keiji hits reply.

 **Akaashi Keiji** √ would you have been more or less offended if i didn't eat it ?

Why send in food if it wasn't meant to be eaten?


	7. Chapter 7

Kuroo Tetsurou just posted a new video: pizza cake

“You guys asked for it, and we’re finally doing this!” His kitchen bench is stuffed with ingredients, it’s going to be a long day—is there a need for everything to be made from scratch? No. Is he going to do it anyway? Yes. Sometimes people need to know that having everything themselves is firstly cheaper, and secondly (and probably most importantly in Tetsurou’s mind) it’s much more impressive. “Pizza cake!” 

Tetsurou clears off the bench, ready to start.

“Now,” he mixes up some warm water with yeast, “I had this requested a heap before, but then apparently I messed up by making an actual cake that just looked like pizza. Since then, many of you have kindly shown me the light that is a pizza topped up and up and up with _layers_.”

He lets the water rest and mixes together all the other dry ingredients for what will be the pizza dough. “So, I haven’t said anything yet, but I am making the pizza dough myself for this. The recipe I’m using will be posted below, or you can just buy ready made pizza bases. I’m trying to impress someone, but if this is for yourself or for a party or something nobody will know the difference.”

Tetsurou pauses, adds in the dry ingredients to the activated yeast mixture and rolls it all together.

“Use ready made dough and say you made it—you’ll mean the cake but everyone else will think you meant the whole thing and nobody has to be any the wiser.”

“I’m just going to leave this to rise for a little while and in the meantime prepare all the toppings for the pizza.”

Tetsurou moves to his fridge opening the door and taking out all the ingredients he had sitting on his bench earlier. There was no great need to put them away, apart from the lack of space. One day Tetsurou will have the kitchen of his dreams. Until then, he has this one.

Tetsurou dices up onions, slices through mushrooms, chops up tomatoes.

“And now that the dough has risen, we can lay it out and start stacking up out pizza!”

He’s made so much dough, the first thing Tetsurou has to do is cut it into pieces. “I guess this is where I should be saying that if you’re buying dough, you should buy five pieces of dough. More if you want more layers, and your oven can handle it—mine can’t,” a thing he will forever be grumbling about. One day, Tetsurou thinks again, one day the dream kitchen will be his. “If you’re not that hungry, and this is just a treat for you, you can put in fewer layers. Not that I’m saying you can’t eat the full thing by yourself, this is a no judgement zone and if you actually do you should send me before and after pictures—of the plate, but of course, feel free to have pictures of yourself too if you like. Just tag me!”

Tetsurou sprinkles an obnoxious amount of corn starch over his bench top and cuts the dough into sections. He lathers up his rolling pin in starch the same way and rolls the pieces flat, shapes them to fit the tin he’ll be baking in, and when all that is done he focuses back on making his individual pizzas.

He spreads on tomato paste, and smokey sauce, and each pizza _is_ just a little bit different and he is only now thinking that the different pizzas might not actually go that well together. 

Spinach and mushrooms and onion and tomato on one.

Chicken and pepperoni and capsicum on another.

Tuna and mushrooms and mayo on yet another.

Bokuto’s pizza, because Tetsurou can’t make a pizza without automatically making one for his best friend as well: steak, venison, salami, ham, bacon, chorizo to give it a little kick.

None of them work together.

“Why these pizzas?” Tetsurou asks the camera, his fans, himself most of all, “I made what we usually order when everyone gets together and looking at them and knowing that they’re all going to be eaten together I may have realised why none of us have ever hooked up—although I know you guys think differently.” A wink for the camera, Tetsurou can play along. He lives online, they can’t hide anything from him. Not theories, or art, or the pic that hidden between everything else. “Can you imagine the taste of all of this coming together? It's a thing that was never meant to be.” Tetsurou can only grimace. “And yet here it is now.”

“Here is the tricky part, putting everything together. Usually, when making this I would add all the toppings as I place it into the cake tin, because it can be a lot of fiddling and things may fall, but I wanted you guys to see the individual pizzas first—so if this is a mess I’m blaming all of you. “Bokuto especially,” Tetsurou mumbles under his breath, “him more than anyone why does he only believe in meat on pizza?” The other pizzas have a gentler touch, and then there’s Bokuto can’t be a man without a taste for meat Koutarou. “But actually shout out to Bokuto because his team advanced to the round of sixteen last night—yes I am filming this earlier. Look at me being organised and productive and filming this on Saturday instead of waiting to do it all on Tuesday!”

Tetsurou squeezes in the pizza with the flattest toppings, the one covered in vegetables and healthy things that Bokuto elite athlete Koutarou would have to be force fed. Mushrooms fall off and onions shift but it’s nothing too drastic. “Now we sprinkle some cheese on top and—

“Look at me,” Tetsurou repeats, “being organised and productive and forgetting to buy cheese for the pizzas. What kind of omni makes a pizza without cheese? A courteous one I’m sure, but with the pizzas I’ve got, the missing cheese is going to stand out. So I’ll leave this out and I’ll be back soon with some cheese!”

And because he is an organised and productive member of human society Tetsurou also leaves his camera on. Recording. The entire time that he’s gone. Because a trip to the supermarket is never just a trip to the supermarket to get the one single thing he needs, it’s an adventure, scouting out aisle and items and specials to ensure he isn’t missing out on anything else he might need—in this moment or in a future moment. One can never be too prepared. 

As such, it is more than three hours later that Tetsurou leaves the store—one armed weighed down of bags that should feed him for a week, except… he only bought ingredients for cakes and other junk food—to find his camera not quite dead but flashing dangerously (the one time he actually had it fully charged) and orange light streaming in through the window. He can’t make a video in this light. 

So he doesn’t.

Everything goes back into the fridge, along with all of his new ingredients and he uploads all of the footage to his computer while ordering himself some dinner online—he’s been cooking all day (and walking, and searching, and procrastinating) he doesn’t have the energy to cook on top of all of that.

Organised and productive, Tetsurou repeats to himself. He doesn’t want to put a tired half-assed finish to his video.

And the universe is clearly on his side, because Tetsurou sits down with his pile of food for dinner, loads up something to watch and is met with Akaashi’s new video.

Which is a surprise. And nice. And Tetsurou is definitely going to watch it again in the morning as inspiration to get through the rest of his video.

He leaves a comment on it now, though. Just one. It’s all he’s ever left. And moves on to other videos, eventually settling into something on Netflix as he settles in for a quiet Saturday night to ready himself for the rest of the video tomorrow.

Tetsurou waits for the same time in the afternoon. He pulls out fluffier pieces of rolled dough and sits them up ion his counter ready to assemble and bake them today, finally. Then he can hand them off to Daishou-san and hope that none of her kids at school are allergic to anything in it—because that’s what he should be worried about… not at all thinking about how it’s actually going to _taste_ — because that is a problem, Tetsurou remembers, now that everything is in front of him again.

A choice he regretted yesterday and regrets even more now that it’s day two. 

Perhaps this doesn't go to anyone except his own mouth and surely soon afterwards, the bin.

He’s not going to subject anyone to this.

(Although, he still holds some hope that it will surprise him.)

“Now that we have cheese,” the thing that turned his Saturday into a train wreck, “we can sprinkle a little bit of cheese on, add the next slice,” he sprinkles some cheese, just a little bit now that he’s decided nobody’s going to eat it, and slides in another pizza, trying carefully not to upend any of the ingredients, “and then repeat.”

More sprinkles of cheese, another pizza, a sprinkle of cheese, the final pizza.

“Then if necessary,” it’s not for him, the last piece of the puzzle has been the easiest to place, “you can decorate. Like if you’re making this yourself and don’t need to show each individual pizza, only this top piece needs to actually look nice.” His is already done. “All this piece needs is some cheese,” he liberally spreads cheese around the last pizza, “and then into the oven!”

He’s forgotten to preheat the oven.

Yesterday he did but didn’t cook and today he didn’t when he does need to cook.

Need is a strong word.

Tetsurou leaves the pizza cake on the bench and turns the camera off this time while he sets his oven up to the right temperature. Ten minutes later he moves his camera and starts filming again. “We’ll give this twenty minutes to half an hour, just depending on how well I think it’s cooking through. If you have fewer layers then I think twenty minutes will be fine but if you have a lot of layers remember, you’ll want to make sure you’re getting through to the middle of the cake as well.”

It goes in the oven, the light clicks on and he sets the timer into position.

This video has gone on twenty-four hours longer than he expected and he can’t wait for it to be done. Twenty minutes. Half an hour. An extra five minutes just to make sure. Finally, he pulls it from the oven and leaves it on the bench to cool. “You will need to cool this— yes, I know, stop complaining— or it will fall apart. You want it to set, okay? Okay!” 

He’s the one eating it, he moves it to the fridge.

After ten minutes he moves it back to the bench.

“Aaaaaaaand we’re done, let’s see how it looks!”

He pops the cake from the pan to set up on the bench, he takes a picture of it with his phone, a few pictures, something he might be able to use as the thumbnail. With a sharp knife, he cuts through the centre of the cake, then again at an angle to cut out a good chunk. The smell of every piece hits him, not all of them agreeing with each other, but it doesn’t look bad. And that’s what he’s going for.

“And there you have it! Pizza cake! Excellent for parties or if you’re just… really hungry I guess.”

He wouldn’t be able to eat it himself, but he has just watched Akaashi eat an entire pizza.

He shrugs. “See you next time!”

He deflates. He’s exhausted. The video did not turn out as expected and he really only has himself to blame. But hey! He is organised and productive and he has a video two days early, so cutting it all together on Tuesday is still going to be easier than usual.


	8. Chapter 8

Akaashi Keiji just posted a new video: leaning tower of pizza

“So,” Keiji looks at the monstrosity laid out in front of him, “this was recommended to me on twitter.” He shudders looking at it, even though he already has even more food on hand to add to it—but as his idol Kinoshita-san says: _there is no such thing as too much cheese_. Keiji hasn’t quite developed her habit of adding it to everything he can think of (and even some things he doesn’t think of). “So," he says again, "I have no idea why, but here I am, and this is what I do with my life.”

Which he loves, but there’s eating and enjoying food to the best of his capabilities… and then there’s consuming something that looks like it could give him a heart attack in two bites. There's a difference

“At least my visit to the doctor is next week,” he comments to the camera, “just my regular check up, to those of you who are new here, and worry for me, thank you for your concern but rest assured I want my body to continue working and living just as much as you do—more even,” he adds as an aside. He likes that strangers around the world care for him, but he wouldn’t continue making such extravagant videos—and meals—everyday if his health was seriously at risk.

These are the choices he has made in life, but he still wants to think he has a long life ahead of him.

Well, there’s always an exception. The pizza monstrosity that sits before him is definitely an exception. It looks like it could cut his life down by years. And he hasn't even made his adjustments yet.

“I’m amazed that so many of you care for me and yet so many of you were also the ones who wanted to see me eat this.” It’s amusing. Keiji is sure there must be some overlap in the two groups of people. After all, they want to watch him eat so they don’t have to. 

“I have four pizzas in here already,” Keiji waves down to the pile in front of him, “which have already been cooked, but I also have two more to add,” he waves to the two boxes at his side, “with some extra cheese to try and hold it all together. I also have some iced tea to drink with it because I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”

He doesn’t bring the camera with him to the kitchen. It takes twenty minutes to heat up the extra pizzas that he’s adding to his pile, and then another five for him to melt in the entire bag of shredded cheese he bought to add in on top.

Which doesn’t even fit in his oven. 

Keiji has to take out all of the racks remove it from the pan he had planned on using to keep everything neat, and squish the entire lot between two trays and then squeeze it even further so that he can shove it into his oven. Something is going to burn, his kitchen might catch on fire... the battery on his camera is ready.

(And he's insured.)

He does bring the camera to film it as he takes it from the oven for the last time. Because through the window, it looks beautiful. Goopy strips of cheese have bubbled up between the trays, dripping down the dough and glistening in a way that has Keiji more than ready to eat this particularly monstrosity. This beautiful, glistening, heavenly smelling monstrosity. Some things are worth dying for and this may very well be one of those things. 

The camera doesn’t catch the picture-perfect melting of the cheese through the oven, all he sees through the screen of the camera is his own reflection in the oven door, but opening the oven results in a rush of steam and an even greater smell. “I wish technology was advanced enough for all of you to smell this, for those of you who can, I promise I’m drooling just as much.” His words stick in his throat because of it, and Keiji rushes to put the camera back in its place so that he can remove his tower of pizzas from the oven without burning his hands beyond reasonable use. 

Without the trays or the pan to support it, his stack of pizzas sit ominously in the centre of his table. Will it slide into his lap? Off towards the camera? All over the table? The guess is anyone's, and Keiji wonders if people will make bets on it.

“I have no idea how to actually go about eating all of this.”   


The purpose, surely, is to consume all of it together, but unfortunately, his mouth is not so big as to be quite so accommodating to such a large quantity of food in one go. His stomach, as some people comment, is magical, but the size of his mouth is appallingly normal.

“I’ll try at least one bite with as much of it as I can get.” Which is easier said than done. “I guess,” Keiji huffs, “this is just going to have to be a messy meal.” He has to move his hand from where it's balancing the tower in place. His eyes roam, analysing its stability while he leaves it for a second but only catching on still sizzling cheese caught between the layers. A sharp knife slides almost smoothly down to cut off a thin slice and there’s nothing else for it—

“Here we go,” using both hands, to leave the tower once again precariously balanced, Keiji picks up the slice he’s cut out and ignoring the slide of grease down his fingers and the mess of sauce he can already feel ending up on his face, he presses it all in, and shoves—with less grace than he’d like to admit he has given the camera recording his every movement—the entire thing, six layers and extra cheese, into his mouth.

Groaning is the only sound he can emit until he’s chewed enough to be able to talk again.

A moan escapes instead.

Until all the food is gone from his mouth, bite one of who knows how many. “That was delicious, I can only imagine how much more so it would be if each of the pizzas matched. I don’t know why they’re all different.” A lapse in judgement on his part for sure.

The next few bites are smaller. Easier to handle. Messier. His tower of pizzas has fallen into a sloppy mess. It still smells heavenly... visually, all appeal has been lost. Some people would surely question whether it ever had any at all.

“It is a lot better when I take bites of the pizzas that actually aren’t too bad together. Something to consider for anyone else out there who wants to try—“ he waves a hand over what can't really be called pizza anymore, only a giant mess— “this.”

Another few bites, half of what was once a great tower, gone; and his glass of tea refilled twice. “The taste does actually get old after a while, so maybe having lots of different flavours _is_ better.” Another bite. “Or just not making such a thing. Individual pizzas are more than enough on their own.”  

He eats the rest of it. The last half. The equivalent of three whole pizzas and a half a bag of cheese.

It’s a lot. It’s a lot of oil and grease and mess and Keiji is glad he can’t quite see himself in the small display on the camera. He must look grotesque, picking up food from the pile of ingredients in front of him, shovelling it into his face with his hands. He could have thought this meal through a lot more, but it's too late for such thoughts now.

“Well,” he didn’t even think of bringing something down to wipe his face with, he’ll have to go without, with the sauce and grease spread over his cheeks, “that was certainly an experience. And a mess." A mess he can feel all over his body. "But enjoyable all the same. Do I recommend for you to do this…?” Does he? Does he want to subject his viewers to potential heart attacks? Is he a good person? ... _Debatable_. Highly debatable. “I think everyone who wanted me to try this should try it themselves, and I think anyone who cares about their health should avoid it.”

That should cover it, and cover him. He’s not saying for other people to eat the entire thing themselves. Only he’s idiot enough to do that.

Most people probably make such a thing with friends and share. But here he is, the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday, on his own and eating it himself.

“As always, thank you for watching, and I’ll hopefully see you next time!”

Keiji clicks off the camera, and avoids looking at his face as he moves to the bathroom to wash the grease from his hands and mouth. He’ll see it enough later… and hope ignoring it was the best way to go about dealing with it. He hopes it isn’t too obvious. He could send the video away to be edited but it took longer than expected to eat and it’s too close to his usual upload time to consider asking Ennoshita to photoshop his face clean for him.

The pan and trays go to his sink, his camera plugs into his laptop, and rice goes into the cooker because he needs something _normal_ after his extravagant lunch. 

Editing is brief, he cuts together his opening to his footage of the pizza tower in the oven to actually eating. He adds some effects, some captions, and fiddles with the brightness and the contrast until the sauce spattered an unfortunate amount on his face is less obvious—he ignores the part where suddenly the video looks like it's taken well into the middle of the night to finish filming.

He hits upload. It’s done. He’s done with it. He doesn’t want to spend too long fixating on something he knew he would be self-conscious about. It’s his own fault for not taking precautions earlier, for not pausing to go and pick up some paper towels once he knew it would be a mess.

It’s done.

A bath to wash away the mess he still feels clinging to him, and then he sits to a more than healthy heaping of rice and vegetables while he responds to comments.

**Kuroo Tetsurou** √  commented on your video  leaning tower of pizza: Isn't this a fancy coincidence (Cat Face With Wry Smile )

Keiji can’t find anything to indicate why Kuroo has said such a thing. Is it a complaint? Is he complaining that Keiji gave into everyone sending him pictures of a food that could send him to an early grave? Why does he care? Is he complaining because it is in fact _not fancy_? It might not be aesthetically pleasing in the way Kuroo’s food tends to be, but its appearance was more than enough for Keiji to move from sceptical about consuming such a thing to being excited to do so —although he can admit the aesthetics definitely dropped throughout the video. But the smell, the taste... so many extra things went into making it the experience it was. Why is Kuroo complaining?

_Not complaining_ , Keiji discovers many days later as he views Kuroo’s latest video in his subscription feed. _An actual fancy coincidence_. Keiji clicks on the video and the coincidence is even more astounding—Kuroo filmed his video on Saturday (and Sunday it looks like, that editing can’t fool him). The same day Keiji filmed his own video. 

**Akaashi Keiji** √  Fancy coincidence indeed Kuroo-san.

He should have expected it, but as much as he’s heard the phrase expect the unexpected, if it is, in fact, unexpected how does one prepare themselves to expect it? But—

**Fukuyama** Did Kuroo make this for Akaashi-san???

**Fuchigami**   _+Fukuyama_ omg he totally did!!!

**Okamoto** so Akaashi-san was who he wanted to impress?

**Akabane** Kuroo needs to make more things for Akaashi-san

—he would never have expected for people to think Kuroo made the pizza tower for him. Kuroo’s video showed him rolling up the dough and carefully selecting his ingredients. Keiji showed that at least two of his pizzas were from the refrigerated section of the convenience store, but really they all had been.  

He doesn’t know Kuroo well enough for him to be sent food. His mail item was an outlier. A response to a comment left partially out of spite.

A longstanding mutual friend hasn’t made he and Kuroo actual friends. They've barely talked and —

**Kuroo Tetsurou** √  soon.

This is the first Keiji’s heard of such a thing.

But almost immediately after reading through the thread of comments his notification icon actually lights up and clicking on it tells Keiji that soon does actually mean soon. And also that he needs to get a lot better at expecting the unexpected.

Before responding to the message Keiji edits the description of his own video, a few days old now, unlikely to gain too much more traffic, but before the links, directing traffic to favourite videos and his channel, he adds a link to Kuroo’s latest video:

If you want to try making this yourself: https://youtu.be/KGsdmlB9Jk


End file.
